LIOS Nano

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Background

The brainchild of Steve McCulley, the LIOS Nano is one of the lightest folding bikes in the world. Over a seventeen year career in the Royal Marines, Steve served in all the Commando Units and was deployed worldwide, including operational tours to Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan. His passion for bikes took off when he was thirteen and blossomed throughout his military career, competing in triathlons and cycling races.

Sadly, Steve’s world changed when he was injured by an IED in 2011 leaving him with acute chest, arm and leg injuries ending his service career. During his recovery, knowing he would no longer be able to compete in cycling, he turned his passion into a business. He founded LIOS Bikes, building bespoke high-end performance custom carbon bikes and hand-built carbon wheels.

Refining the brand

Steve was joined in 2015 by friend Wayland Austin, himself a passionate and accomplished cyclist. Wayland had finished a 12-year stint in corporate finance having previously served as an Officer in the Royal Navy. Together they worked to develop a new LIOS urban bike – the carbon made Nano. Highly engineered and weighing just 8.2kg, it is one of the world’s lightest folding bikes, and they tasked us with creating a brand and a website for their new venture.

As the parent brand, the LIOS logotype needed refinement. The previous version was often mistakenly read as ‘‘lids’’ and its forms were inconsistently weighted and spaced. We redrew this and fixed these issues, creating a more streamlined, balanced mark that fits with high-performance racing and custom spirit of the brand.

At a price point starting at £3,250 (and rising to £5,000 for the limited edition ‘Monaco’), the Nano brand had to appeal to a niche demographic; professional, wealthy cycle enthusiasts looking for something cool and nimble to hop on and off the tube and around the city on. As much as it is an incredible piece of engineering, the challenge was to find the sweet spot between a fashion and performance brand.

The hand-drawn Nano wordmark seeks to encapsulate this; strength meets style. Each curve agonised over to find the perfect balance between the heavy and light strokes to create a distinctive identity; elegant and refined at home in the world of premium brands, but equally striking when seen on the bike’s crossbar.

Selling online...

With a beautifully designed and sleek product in hand, Steve and Wayland briefed us to create an equally exquisite ecommerce website to work in parallel with the brand.

Armed with lifestyle photography of models shot on location in London and product imagery taken at a local studio in Cardiff, we created a simple, uncluttered, image-focused website that highlights the agility and convenience the LIOS Nano provides city commuters. To satisfy the keen bike nerds, we present close-up photography of the Nano’s high-end componentry showing the finer technical details from every possible angle.

The website was developed in a powerful Content Management System with features that include an advanced banner manager, a social aggregator, a 360° viewer and ecommerce integration.